by Francesca Wever-Newth
Sometimes it’s important to be sober. Your best friend’s wedding, for example. Film premiers, especially when they are your own, most definitely fall into this category; be-on-your-best-behaviour-or-expect-social-ruin-!
Here is my OMG story. It took place last Friday.
Jammy Dodger © Alice Feaver
I’m at a friend’s flat, killing time before I have to leave. Four hours till I have to go. I’ve been hungry all day, but I have that irritating issue that often arises when I’m abroad. I’m too broke to eat out and can’t be bothered to cook, especially not fumbling about in someone else’s kitchen. Fumbling in foreign kitchens feels so wrong.
This is Berlin. It is the coldest winter in twenty years, Berlinale fever has hit the city and I’m screening the documentary film I made with a friend. The film is about ‘Mauerpark’ [Wall park], a space I became obsessed with when I lived across the road from it in the summer of 2007. I would spend my Sunday mornings at its quirky flea market and then lie on the grassy slope and unashamedly people-watch. I got so engrossed I wrote a dissertation about the history and politics of the space. But my little corner of Berlin – former border zone and death strip between East and West Berlin – is under threat, as developers plan six-storey town houses on its periphery. We interviewed the architect of the park and the people trying to save it. Pretty serious stuff.
The film premier is tonight and I’m starving. I watch TV with the hope it will drown out the angry growling coming from my stomach. For a couple of minutes I am engrossed with this food dilemma and try to be creative with solutions. Problem: No milk in the fridge. Potential solution: Cereal, double cream and water? Bah. When I hear my phone ringing I am torn away from my banal foodie dreams.
Within the next two hours I discover that the two friends I was relying on to support me me in staying sober tonight, have failed me. One is stuck in Nice in a cheap motel (apparently the French can’t hack the freak snowfall). The other friend has been forced to get back onto the Gatwick Express which failed to get her to the Easyjet counter in time.
My coping strategy for this new dilemma finds expression in my original dilemma – my growing hunger. Again the foreign kitchen guilt gets me, but not enough; I root around the kitchen for any passable snacks. A biscuit would definitely cheer me up right now. I chance upon a biscuit tin and feel like I’ve struck gold when I peer inside. Not only are they homemade but they’re big and round and look like they’d fill that grumbling stomach of mine. Munching my way through homemade foodstuffs makes me feel guilty, probably three or four times more guilty than had they been your average hobnobs. Nevertheless, I gobble a big one down and sneak happily back to the sofa. Lying back I realise I now have two hours to kill – great, just enough time for a DVD. But I realise I’m far sleepier than I realised. So I snooze. Just for a little bit, I think.
I wake up with a bolt forty minutes later, terrified that I’ve slept through the screening, but its OK, the clock says I’m right on time. My heart races, although I feel really drowsy. Stupid, stupid idea to snooze, I should have powered through. I put on some lipstick with the hope I’ll look sprightlier than I feel. In front of the door I get a hunger pang. Damn it, the cookie tin is still within arm’s reach. I peer inside and eye up the biggest one. Compromise, I say to myself as I reach for a smaller one. I’ll buy more tomorrow.
The tube ride passes like I’m in a dream, the stops seem to last forever and I’m lost in unfinished thoughts that merge and overlap with each other. People are looking at me like they can tell what I’m thinking, boring right into my brain. I need some fresh air and to wake up out of this hideous snooze mode. Stupid snooze, I feel hideous.
I miss the turning for the venue twice, and when I eventually find the right road I walk past the door…once, twice. Third time lucky. I sip a beer pathetically. Then I sit outside and hope a cigarette will wake me up from this nonchalant mess. Am I not meant to feel excited, chatty, nervous, even? Why do I not feel okay? I think back to earlier in the day and wonder where it all went wrong. Has someone drugged me? Did I just get roofied? That soup for lunch, it did taste pretty strange, the man did smile at me weirdly. But he was a sweet guy. Or maybe he wasn’t? Dont those men that roofy drinks all appear sweet? My mind is in overdrive. People are arriving, they’re asking me questions, I am trying to understand what they want. I try to look into people’s eyes as they talk to me. Concentrate, I think, concentrate harder.
Somehow, a glimmer of suspicion emerges from somewhere in the back of my head, and I have to call my friend to check… Yes, she says: just one of those cookie – the ones in the special tin, the hash cookies – usually knocks her out for the night.
I spend the rest of the evening in a delirium, wandering about, trying very consciously to focus on people’s eyes as they talk to me. Start film? Sure, yeah, whatever, why not, I introduce the film and half stumble off the stage. Film starts, film finished, people applaud, people compliment, what’s the music? Dunno. Oh God, stay cool. This is gruesome.
I feel like I’m drunk at my best friend’s wedding.
But I really don’t care, I AM SO HUNGRY.
